Are you a supporter or enabler? The hidden enemy!

Hi. Today we’re going to talk about the difference between support and enabling.

That’s right. Supporting someone or enabling someone, a lot of the time when someone has a problem or a concern or an issue, you want to help because you care. But are you really helping them or are you enabling them to keep the problem? An enabler is someone that helps someone maintain a problem. Amy right here is holding a rock. And this is going to represent our problem. So what I’ve got her doing is just holding her arm out straight. Look at that muscles, might. So imagine this is her problem. But after a period of time, her problem becomes too hard for her to handle. So I care about Amy. So what I’m going to … oh hey, that’s getting too heavy. Here, let me help you.

Oh.

Oh. Now she can just relax with her problem.

Oh that’s so much better.

Because someone else namely me, is helping her with her problem. Now my arm is getting tired and sore, but Amy’s fine. She can keep her problem. She can have her problems. It’s not a problem anymore-

It’s working out. It’s working out for me.

And that’s one of the habits we want to change. When you see somebody who’s suffering in some way, you have to let them get rid of their problem and then support them or you’re enabling them to keep their problems. Now if I go, look, I’m not going to support you with your problem. I’ll support you once you get rid of the problem. But I can’t support you with the problem because then I’m enabling. I’m not actually supporting.

And now I’m having a hard time holding my problem. It’s really hard to hold it out here.

I dropped the problem, but here’s the-

Now I hear her. I can support. I can help. Okay.

And here’s the really funny thing. No one told me I had to hold on to that. At any moment, I could’ve let it go. But I tried to hang on to it until I couldn’t hold on to it anymore. And that’s what we do with our problems. It’s literally hitting rock bottom. That is the rock bottom right there. Right? And so when we’re enabling and supporting and how do we know the difference. Well we’re enabling when we’re helping that person keep the problem.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Say, for example, a good example is people with alcohol or drugs. Now if someone, while they’re drinking, if you’re paying their rent, paying their food bill. It’s like, oh they don’t have anything to eat. But they’re still drinking. You’re enabling.

You’re enabling.

If they’re not drinking, then you’re supporting them. I pay for your phone bill because you’re not drinking. I’m supporting you. I pay for your phone bill. Oh but you’re still drinking. I’m enabling. Same with emotional. Chemical addiction happens in our brain as well with thoughts, feelings, and emotion. You can get addicted to anger. You can get addicted to frustration. And when you have that addiction, you will find reasons outside of you to express that emotion because you’re having a withdrawal. Like if you’re addicted to anger, and then you haven’t been angry for a period of time, you will say, that person parked too close to my car. That person is a beep. And a beep beep beep the beep. And then you have a reason, external, for you to justify the chemical rush that you are having withdrawals from.

If you regularly have an emotion that’s in the negative, you have a habit loop of creating that situation. That’s what you want to look at-

And almost an addiction to that situation.

Oh yeah.

So-

But you can get addicted to good things as well.

You can get addicted to exercise.

Boop boop.

You can get addicted to good food, healthy food. You can get addicted to having fun.

Yeah.

Or laughing.

The feeling you get, the endorphins, the dopamine, the serotonin, those elements that uplift you. You can get, hey I’m missing that. I want more of that. Now we don’t really associate addiction with good things because addiction has the negative connotation to it.

But here’s the thing. We are habitual creatures.

We are.

We are creatures of habits. So we can choose to have a good habit, or we can choose to have a bad habit. It’s a choice.

So we just want to look at is our life 10 out of 10. Basically, is our health, our wealth, and our relationships 10 out of 10? If it’s not 10 out of 10, how could we change those habits so we’re supporting and not enabling ourselves to get more out of life?

Exactly. And that’s what we’re here to do. That’s what our program does.

Yep.

My name’s Amy Honey. I want you to lean … it’s been a long day. I want you to lean on my belief in you until you believe in yourself.

Truth, Integrity, Fun. Let’s have more of it. I’m Jamie Honey. Have a great day.